16 Stories About Family Members Who Had a Few Skeletons in the Closet

It seems that we know our family members a little more than everyone else. But sometimes our loved ones can have unbelievable secrets. And the heroes of this article had to find this out firsthand. They told their family stories where things that were hidden became clear.

• My Welsh great-grandmother had passage booked on the Titanic in 1912. She ended up not going because she “fell ill.” Turns out it was an out-of-wedlock pregnancy that gave her such bad morning sickness, she couldn’t go. She lost the baby. She came the following year in 1913 and met my great-grandfather. She only told my mom (who she helped raise during the summers) who then told me. Great-grandma getting knocked up saved the entire branch of our family tree! © sassy_steph_ / Reddit

• I had an uncle who was a railroad engineer and worked the Terre Haute, Indiana to Danville, Illinois line. Never took a day off. At his funeral, a strange woman came into the funeral home with some older children. No one knew who she was and finally, my grandma introduced herself to the woman and asked who she was. The woman said, “I’m Mrs. so-and-so I’m here for my husband’s funeral.” Turns out my uncle had 2 families, one in Terre Haute and one in Danville. I didn’t find out about this until I was an adult. My mom, grandma, aunt, and sister kept this a secret for decades. © mildlysceptical22 / Reddit
• Great grandparents’ 60th-anniversary party at a hotel ballroom with cousins and second cousins who hadn’t seen each other in years. My mom and I were talking to my grandfather.
  Mom: Wow. I haven’t seen Chuck, Fred, and Claire in years.
  Me: No kidding. When do you think we’ll get a group this big back together?
  Mom: Gramps’ birthday is in 6 months. We’ll see some people then.
  Me: 6 months? Isn’t it his 60th?
  All: ...
  Gramps: Huh. I never thought about that.
  My grandfather was 60 when he realized his parents had a shotgun wedding. © Unknown author / Reddit
• The house phone rang. A man introduced himself as a friend of my mum’s and asked for her. My mum wasn’t home, and he started to tell me how he and she loved each other when they were young... In the end, he said that he was my father! That’s it! I interrogated my mum. She was silent at first and then dumbfounded me with words that she didn’t know who my father was herself. My father who raised me, said that she didn’t love him much, but she was in love with that man. But for some reason, she married my father anyway. She crossed paths with the other man once, then she got pregnant. She still doesn’t know from whom. © anna anna / Dzen

• My great-great-grandfather moved from Romania to America and got married to another Romanian immigrant shortly after he arrived. Once they married, he insisted they start using “American” names, only speak English in public, never return to Romania, and refrain from communicating with family in the old country. When my great-grandmother (his daughter) was a teenager it was discovered by the rest of the family that he abandoned his first wife and 3 children in Romania and left them in extreme poverty when he came to the States and married my great-great-grandmother. © SilentBlizzard1 / Reddit
• At the age of 45, I found out that I had a sister who was 12 years younger than me. My father had lived with a woman in his youth before he met my mom. She couldn’t have kids. She chased him away so he could start a family, then I was born. She got cured, found my dad, got pregnant with a daughter, and left for Germany. Helen knew about her father’s existence — her mother told her. She found him on social media and they chatted for a long time. Then the father told me the truth. I was blown away. My father’s crystal clear image dulled slightly. When asked why he hadn’t told me before, he said he was afraid to hurt me. © Maria Ulezko / Dzen
• A part of my mom’s side is very, very convinced they’re Irish. In all the American, “kiss me I’m Irish” ways. My grandparents took a trip there. They spent a lot of time at a local pub, getting to know Irish singers and poets, my cousins have very Irish names, etc. I took a few ancestry tests to nail down the rest of my mom’s side, and not a single percent Irish in any of them. The family name, common in Irish-Americans, is a Swiss surname that got translated at some point, according to the genealogy trace I also had done. My now-deceased grandparents want their ashes spread into the Irish Sea and my mom and her siblings are planning a big trip to do it. I’m taking the secret to my grave. © LaLucertola / Reddit

• My older brother might only be my half-brother. About 10 or so years ago, I went out drinking with my dad for his birthday. He got hammered and told me that when he and my mom first got together, she was still in a relationship with an abusive guy. She got pregnant around the time that she left him, so there’s about a 50/50 chance that my older brother is the other guy’s biological son. I asked him if he ever thought about getting tested to find out and he said, “No. I don’t care what any test says — that is MY son.”
  The next day, he seemed to have no recollection of telling me that bombshell about my brother and I never brought it up again. © Cheese_Pancakes / Reddit
• When I was 5 years old (1988), Santa Claus left a Nintendo on our front porch. It was wrapped in newspaper, and my parents had no idea who gifted it to us. My dad, particularly, tried to figure it out. He was always suspicious that it had been a family friend. It was by far the best gift of the year, and we played it all the time throughout our childhood. My dad died in 2004. Last Christmas, my mom explained that she was the one who had bought it and surreptitiously placed it on the porch. My dad liked to be in control of things and had forbidden the purchase. She knew better. She didn’t tell a soul for 30 years. Thanks, Mom. © Madame_F / Reddit
• One day, when my sister and I were already grown up, my mum got candid and told us that our beloved grandad wasn’t our grandfather. He was her stepfather. I don’t know what reaction she was expecting, but my sister and I looked at each other and said, “So what?” To us, he remained our loving, funny, kind grandfather. © A View from the Dark Side of Power / Dzen

• A cousin of mine died in a motorcycle accident. Loving dad of 2. Tragedy and all that. I was in it at the time and was asked to hack his computer because his grieving widow could not access pictures and email. I found a secret email account through which he was messaging his mistress. This was 5 days after his death and his inbox was filled with “Are you okay? What is going on?” messages. She was unaware of his death. So I wrote her an email explaining with a link to the obituary and newspaper article. She came to the funeral but didn’t say anything. Introduced herself as a coworker. I removed all evidence from the computer before giving it back to the widow to preserve the memory of this guy to his wife and kids. © NocturnalCoder / Reddit
• I have a long-time friend. She and her mom were full namesakes. She gave birth to a baby girl in her thirties and named her after herself. All that was known about the baby’s father was that he was married. And then her mom died. My friend sat down to sort out some documents and froze. She found letters from her father. In them, he asked how she was doing, whether she had received money, thanked her for her daughter’s photo from the graduation, and congratulated her on the birth of her granddaughter. There was an address in the neighboring region. After thinking for a long time, my friend and her husband got into the car and drove off. They found a house in the village, and an elderly man opened the door, who turned out to be her father. There was a portrait of her in the house, the one from her graduation. It turned out that everyone in his family knew that he had a daughter. And the next time my friend came with her daughter. They all got to know each other and started to help the old man. He bequeathed the house to my friend. Now she and her husband live there. How could they hide all this for almost 50 years? © Olga Savina / Dzen
• Found out that I was the product of an affair between my mom and her younger coworker. I was hit out of the blue with this knowledge. My dad was aware of the affair and the deal was made that he’d raise me as his own and my bio dad was out of the picture. © Jezebel_in_H**l626 / Reddit

• I don’t know who my paternal grandfather is. At all. My grandmother never married, gave birth to a son, and never told anyone who his father was, not even a hint. She could have at least said something like, “He was a traveling trucker,” but no, she refused to talk about it at all. So she took the secret to her grave. All my life I’ve been thinking about who it was. How can I find out? © Everything at once / Dzen
• My great-grandmother had a child with someone (no idea who) and a few years later met my great-grandfather. He proposed but said she would have to get rid of the kid before he would marry her. She agreed and brought the kid somewhere: to an orphanage, to their father, or his family, no one knows. She came back, they married, and had 3 kids. Never talked about that first child again, it’s a huge mystery. © Idislikethis_ / Reddit
• We have a dramatic story in our family too. On my father’s side. Growing up, we loved our grandmother and grandfather. We also had an uncle and 3 aunts. We loved them all and didn’t even know about one family secret. When my father was born, his mother was ill and couldn’t look after the newborn. His older sisters had to babysit the little one. Then grandfather and grandmother decided to give the youngest to another family because they couldn’t afford to raise the fifth child. When they came for him, the older brother (16 years older than my father) grabbed the younger one, yelled at his parents, and ran away to hide in the corn. That’s how the older children defended the younger ones. Gradually everything got better, although they lived quite poorly. © Antennas G. / Dzen

And here’s another bunch of stories about people who discovered dark family secrets.